before, the unity of our history comes into view. We are conscious of it even at those very points where until now it seemed most obscure, where the breach between past and present seemed final, when a great gulf divided the fathers from the sons.

This change is seen, for example, in the new feeling evoked in us by the ancient monuments of our national culture. We have always admired themthese beautiful cathedrals-as worthy representatives of our past; but till now our admiration was æsthetic merely, and cold. Despite our appreciation of them the ancient temples of our fathers seemed foreign and not wholly comprehensible; they spoke to us of a culture no longer ours, of thoughts we do not share, of emotions which stir us no more. But now, does it not seem as though the old walls, dumb so long, were addressing us with their ancient eloquence; as though that which has been dead for centuries were coming to life again? How the distance has shrunken which separates contemporary France from the cathedral of Rheims or of Notre Dame! Is not Westminster Abbey dearer than ever to the hearts of Englishmen ? And that is so not merely because these precious monuments are threatened by great guns and Zeppelins, or shattered by shell fire. Beyond all this, an inward change has taken place in the relations which connect the living generation with the past embodied in these buildings.

Historic days such as these, when all recognized values are undergoing a complete revision, lead with the certainty of fate to a thoroughgoing depreciation of that practical materialism which, as I have said, seemed on the eve of the war to be dominating civilization. But now, when men, by a voluntary sacrifice, are going forth in masses to die for their country, we are beginning to feel ashamed of our excessive preoccupation with comfort and enjoyment. Hence it is that gifts for the wounded and for the victims of the war pour forth in a flood. Men who renounce everything that they may give their goods to the poor have ceased to be rare exceptions, and among those who have no goods to give away there

are multitudes who willingly sacrifice their labor for the common cause.

Confronted with death, which is raking in its victims by tens of thousands, the value we set on wealth is totally changed. To those who risk their lives wealth is worthless, and those who lose their nearest and dearest, or know they may lose them at any moment, ask themselves again and again-To what purpose, and for whom, do we guard our riches and labor to increase them?

When great world movements impose these thoughts on man, the quest for the means of existence ceases to be his sole preoccupation and no longer leads him to forget the goal. When once the life of the spirit has begun to stir, wealth returns to its secondary rôle as an instrument destined to serve the high and holy end of our existence. It is little surprising that the modern man begins, under these conditions, to draw near in spirit to the ancient shrines, in which even luxury ennobled itself by becoming the transparent expression of spiritual experience. Thus approaching one another the generations join hands across the centuries, forming one nation continuous in time.

The truth is that we are coming into relation with a new world, which has been unknown to us hitherto. Spiritual powers, invisible until now, have appeared in our midst. I say "invisible," only because their action is hidden from man so long as he is immersed in the cares of material well-being. And now at the very moment when the world is deluged with blood, and a hurricane of fire, which destroys everything in its passage, is threatening to turn our well-being into dust and ashes-behold, the blind see and the deaf begin to hear! Dimly we foresee the coming victory of mind over chaos. One might almost say that a flash of lightning, leaping from the universal tempest, has suddenly revealed to is a new aspect of the world. It behooves us to be quick in fixing upon our memory the momentary vision; for soon it will fade and vanish completely in the common light of day. But when it has gone we must cherish the recollection of it, for we shall find it indispensable as a source

of encouragement in the tremendous work of organization and creation which must begin when the war is over.

When, after this time of tempest, we enter once more on the long-drawn-out succession of common and monotonous days, we shall again feel ourselves oppressed by the pettiness of an existence so seemingly flat and meaningless. But let no man fold his arms and abandon himself to despair! Let him rather recall this fair vision of the future humanity, of which he has already had a glimpse; let him reflect on the heroism,

hidden deep in man, which, in great moments, triumphs over the seeming insignificance of his nature. To the spectacle of division and discord, as it will then return, let him oppose this memory of the nation which found its unity in the act of raising itself above the earthly interests of common days. And when the rivalry and jealousy of the nations bring new clouds on the horizon, let him remember how, one day, the rolling thunder of a universal tempest announced to him the unity and solidarity of all mankind. Kalouga, Russia.

R

by

USSIA is, for the mass of people in England, an unknown country. It is separated in many ways -by distance, by language, social organization and habits. It is at the other end of Europe, so that the journey from one country to the other is long, expensive, and rather laborious. Not only the language but even the alphabet is different from ours, and the ways of common life are in many respects strange and take some pains to understand. To these difficulties in the way of intercourse has to be added, not only the national English dislike of foreigners, but the alienation caused by past hostility. The Crimean war, one of the greatest blunders of English statesmanship, drove a wedge between the two nations just when they might have begun to understand one another. Then there followed a long period of jealousies over our Indian frontier and conflicting interests in Southeastern Europe. Twice we were on the brink of war with Russia, once over Constantinople in 1877-8, and again over Afghanistan in 1884-5. Then the FrancoRussian alliance was formed at a time when Great Britain was on uneasy and almost hostile terms with France. It is only in recent years that we have come to regard Russia as a neighbor and tried to understand the Russian Nation and the Russian life.

Instances of the greatness of our ignorance are the common beliefs that the Russians are an Asiatic race, and that they speak a barbarous language. The facts are quite the contrary. The Slavs are, like ourselves, pure Aryans; they are cousins of the Latins and the Celts and the Germans, and have exactly the same claim as these other nations to be

counted European. The countries occupied by them used at one time to extend all over Northern Germany as far west as the Elbe, and even now there are Slav peoples in large numbers in the heart of Central Europe. So, too, about their language. The Russian language, which is spoken (with some varieties of dialect) by more than 100,000,000 people, is one of the richest and noblest of human languages. It provides as valuable a mental discipline as any other modern language, perhaps even as Greek or Latin, and it is a language in which many great works of literature, as we shall see later, have been written.

In any account of Russian literature, two kinds of it have to be considered which are historically separate, though the one to some extent grew out of and is founded upon the other. There is the early popular literature of tales, ballads, and poems which grew up among the people, was handed down by memory, and very often was not committed to writing at all until modern times. There is also the regular literature of books, which begins when language has been studied as an art and reduced to rules. This latter is the form which literature takes in modern times. In both forms the record of Russia is extraordinarily rich.

From very early times Russian as a spoken language produced a copious treasure of tales and ballads, epics and songs. The old Russian fairy tales now recovered and written down are of the highest rank in their wealth of fancy, their freshness, and beauty. The " epic songs or "heroic songs" going back to the early Middle Ages, from the tenth to the thirteenth century, are no less important. They have been collected and

printed in modern times by Danilev, Rybnikov, Sakharov, and many others. They are not only of immense historical interest, but reveal a power of imagination and expression not excelled by anything produced in Western Europe. To the same period belonged the prose epics, nearly all now lost. One of these, "The Raid of Prince Igor," was rediscovered in 1795; and both in matter and style it is a masterpiece, to be set alongside of the French "Chanson de Roland" or the great Icelandic Sagas. The production of this early popular literature received

a

severe check from the conquest of Southern Russia by the Mongols (a race akin to the Huns) in the thirteenth century. Ages of devastation followed, during which Russia sank back into something approaching barbarism. But

the instinct for the popular epic survived, and put forth fresh and vigorous growths during the period which was in England that of Shakespeare and Milton.

Regular Russian literature, in the modern sense of the term, is hardly more than a century old. It began in the result partly of the introduction of Western education, partly of the rediscovery of their own older literature. Both took effect when the Russian Empire had been consolidated in the eighteenth century. Lomonosov, by his work on the Russian language, paved the way for style and composition. He was a man of immense learning, and the University of Moscow was founded (1755) under his influence. At first the books written were in the French manner, which was then dominant in Europe. The great impulse toward a truly national Russian literature was given by the national war of 1812, and the first really great work which that impulse produced was Karamzin's "History of Russia," published in the year after Waterloo. For its period it was a remarkable achievement merely as history, but its chief importance was in its larger aspect as literature. It established interest among the educated classes in the history of their own country, and it also established Russian prose as a fine art, and became a classic on its literary merit. About the same time there were writing a number of poets

who, though not of the first rank, helped to do for verse what Karamzin had done for prose.

All this work was pioneering in unexplored regions. It may help us to understand Russian literature to think of it as like English literature starting with Scott and Byron if these authors had had no predecessors except the ballads, chronicles, and romances of the Middle Ages, and if in the beginning of the nineteenth century they had had to make their language as well as write in it.

The new movement rapidly bore fruit, and it took shape in the works of Pushkin, the real founder of modern Russian literature. He was both a poet and a prose writer of the romantic school; he corresponds broadly to both Scott and Byron in this country. He was much influenced by Shakespeare, but his genius was quite individual and also quite national. His narrative poem, "Evgeny Onegin," his historical tragedy, "Boris Godunov," and his prose stories of Russian life are all masterpieces. He remains not only a founder but a model. He was more of an artist than a thinker, but his writings have a purity and sincerity of the highest and most lasting value. Like Scott, he was a romantic who did not lose touch with reality, and who gave voice in his writings to the life of his nation. Through him Russian literature was able to claim a place with French and German, English and Italian, among the national literatures of Europe.

That claim was established, that place secured, by the three great imaginative writers of the next generation. Pushkin and his contemporaries, indeed, have only become known largely outside of Russia in the reflected light of those successors, who compelled the attention and won the admiration of the whole world. Turgeneff, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy are by common consent among the greatest writers of all ages and countries. It would be needless to labor a point which no one would deny. Taken together, they sum up a production comparable in largeness, force, and vital truth to those of Elizabethan or Victorian England. Of this great trinity but few words need be said.